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Their replacement, merely to satisfy current political fancy, serves no functional purpose. Those who cannot bring themselves to use the A.D. and B.C. convention might be advised to adopt the astronomical convention, which would have the advantage of both avoiding the liturgical associations, to the degree accepted as practical, and using a dating system more mathematically consistent. |
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The abbreviation B.P., meaning Before Present, is a different matter. Normal calendric usage requires that the epoch of a calendar be a fixed date. The "present," however, is a variable epoch, which changes with each day. Thus, the term B.P. is typically used in applications such as paleontology, where a calendar is not really at issue, and the relative time scale makes the variability of the epoch an insignificant matter. Such a term has functional meaning, and does not conflict with calendric usage or common sense in any meaningful way. It is simply a harmlessly technical way to say "ago." |
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5.2.1.1
Alphanumeric Formatting Functions |
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The alphanumeric formatting functions discussed here implement the three major formats, displaying the month in alphabetic form, as opposed to numeric form. |
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The military format (Listing 5.5, page 90) is a simple alphanumeric format used by the U.S. military and some computer manufacturers, in which the month is identified by a standard three-character abbreviation, normally capitalized. The order of this format is DMY. The third day of December of 1995 would appear as 03 DEC 95, for example. The primary object of this format is to eliminate possible confusion regarding the relative order of the month and day by using a nonnumeric indicator for the month. |
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Certain applications may use the older convention of displaying the date in Roman numerals. For this purpose, a routine is supplied for converting numbers to Roman numerals [arabic_to_roman ()]. This routine can also be properly used with other calendars, such as the French Revolutionary calendar. |
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5.2.1.2
Numeric Formatting Functions |
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The numeric formatting functions are similar to their alphanumeric cousins, except that the month is displayed in numeric format. |
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format_date_numeric_DMY () formats a date into a string using the European convention of DMY, or day-month-year, order. |
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format_date_numeric_MDY () formats a date into a string using the American convention of MDY, or month-day-year, order. |
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format_date_numeric_YMD () formats a date into a string using the Japanese convention of YMD, or year-month-day order. |
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